The 36th ASA Q&P Section’s Quality and Productivity Research Conference will be hosted by American University in Washington, DC, June 11–13. The theme of this year’s conference is “Data and Science Is a Winning Alliance.”

The goal of the conference is to stimulate interdisciplinary research among statisticians, scientists, and engineers in quality and productivity. The conference aims to demonstrate and explore the marriage of data and science, as well as modern scientific approaches to handling big, multidimensional, and unstructured data. Its aim is to show convincingly how data and science—the two fundamental sources of knowledge—are using each other to produce new discoveries, progress, improved quality, and increased productivity.

The conference will include comprehensive discussions about cutting-edge methodologies in all aspects of data science and the current progress made in such computer-intensive fields as stream data mining, machine learning, functional data analysis, image reconstruction, and facial recognition. Participating statisticians, data scientists, quantitative analysts, and representatives of different branches of industry and government will exchange novel ideas and experiences working with modern big data to gain knowledge and apply it in numerous fields.

The conference will honor Barry Nussbaum, former chief statistician of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the 112th president of the ASA.

Conference registration is open. For an additional fee, the short course “Big Data Analytics: Dealing with Structured, Semi-Structured, and Unstructured Data” by Choudur Lakshminarayan of Teradata Corp. can be added to your registration. The course will be offered June 10.

American University will provide accommodation at a lower cost than nearby hotels for conference participants who choose to stay on campus. The conference website contains up-to-date information about the conference program, short course, registration, and hotel.

To encourage student participation, Mary G. and Joseph Natrella scholarships, QPRC student scholarships, and travel awards will be available. Further information will be provided via the conference website.

To submit a contributed paper, provide the title, authors, and an abstract to Michael Baron. The deadline for submitting an abstract is April 1.